No, they're not an amazing collection of musicians breaking new ground, but on their day they are exactly the loud, snotty bag of noise you need in your life.
Sure they came with baggage, they came with a reputation and a legacy - but that was all part of the show, right?
Then they decided to come clean, and wrote The Dirt.
In their own words they told the full story of every drug, girl, hotel, argument, tragedy and success and so their place in the rock n roll gutter was cemented.
Then word came out that the book was to become a film.
With the band's full input they were going to happily lay everything bare. Again.
Only this time, it being visual, nothing would be left to the imagination.
Which, when you consider how little was left to the imagination in the book, was a bold move...
And so, after various meetings and dead ends, it was Netflix that took on the challenge of presenting Motley Crue to an audience, many of whom may not even be aware that band actually wrote a couple of boss tunes.
And, it has to be said, while they've played around a bit with who said what when (if the book is to be believed it wasn't Tom Zutaut who signed over the band's rights) they sure as hell haven't sugared the pill.
Which on the one hand is to be commended, but on the other does make them a lot harder to love.
But first, let's look at the positives.
The casting — Douglas Booth as bassist and band leader Nikki Sixx, Machine Gun Kelly as drummer/startlet marrier Tommy Lee, Iwan Rheon as moody guitarist Mick Mars and Daniel Webber as singing idiot Vince Neil — is spot on.
In particular, Webber captures the dichotomy that is Neil perfectly, while Kelly and Booth could pass as their musician counterparts with consummate ease.
And the story is totally Crue.
It's crass, debauched, disgusting, loud, snotty, filmed at 90mph — it could only be about this band.
And the dark side is not flinched away from.
Neil is responsible for the death of Hanoi Rocks drummer Razzle (not a spoiler, it's been rather well documented), and later suffers harrowing personal tragedy.
Nikki takes to heroin a bit too well, which my have given the band a cracking song but did nearly kill him.
And Tommy may have been madly in love, but that didn't stop him bonking anything that smiled at him.
All of which is, to a point, fine and dandy.
However, in the hands of director Jeff Tremaine (of Jackass and Bad Grandpa fame), it all feels more goofy than grim.
Just to recap.
The singer was driving drunk, crashed, and the drummer of another band died.
The bass player over-dosed and was brought back to life with two syringes of adrenaline in the back of an ambulance.
These should be dark moments. I mean, they were for the band.
And yet neither scene has any real depth, any weight. They are treated with the same gravitas as televisions being thrown out of hotel windows.
Which is a shame, because the Crue of today have expressed remorse, regret and awareness of what went down (if you overlook the box set of a few years back called Music To Crash Your Car To).
Instead, this is a film for teenage boys - albeit teenage boys of 1984 rather than those with modern sensibilities.
There's more nudity than is necessary, there's an opening scene which would be more at home on the specialised porn sights the UK is trying to clamp down on, a woman is punched, and while the band do get clean there's no sense that getting loaded on heroin, coke and vodka on a nightly basis is in any way a negative.
Even the book covers that angle.
There's also the issue with trying to shoe-horn the whole story into a little under two-hours.
The guys played the prestigious Monsters Of Rock festival in England a couple of times, they played the massive Moscow Peace Festival and punched Jon Bon Jovi, Nikki died more than once...
All of these events would seem to have had more of an impact in their lives and career than Vince humping someone else's girlfriend in a bathroom.
Maybe.
Which leads to the ultimate quandary about this film.
All four band members were executive producers, so signed off on this. Which means they're happy for us all to see them as philandering, crashing, women-hitting douche bags.
I mean, I know that was kind of their rep, their image, but... that's how they want to be remembered?
Having said all that, something magical does happen.
Yeah, sure, John Corabi is all-but rinsed from Crue history, but the final scenes do make you feel good.
You're glad they somehow got through it all, survived ants being snorted, and took to the stage again as the band they always were (only, you know, actually a really tight musical unit).
Like their early albums, there are things to love about the Crue here — but a lot you can skip past.
It's their legacy, their history, so it's for them to decide what we see, but I can't shake the feeling that a better director would have given us a better film.
Soundtrack's good, mind, even if they did ignore Saints Of Los Angeles...
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